David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘I trust you disturb me with coffee, Chigwin.’

His young steward, the son of a master shipwright at Chatham who overlooked an awkward debt, peers in. ‘Jones is grinding the beans now, sir: the cook’s had Old Harry of a time keeping the stove alight.’

‘It was coffee I ordered, Chigwin, not a mug of excuses!’

‘Aye, sir: sorry, sir; it should be just a few minutes more…’ a slug-trail of mucus glistens on Chigwin’s sleeve ‘… but those rocks Mr Snitker made mention of are sighted to starboard, and Mr Hovell thought as you may wish to survey them.’

Don’t chew the boy’s head off. ‘Yes, I should.’

‘Would there be any instructions for dinner, sir?’

‘The lieutenants and Mr Snitker shall dine with me tonight, so…’

They steady themselves as the Phoebus plunges down a trough.

‘… bid Jones serve us up those chickens that are laying no more. I have no space for idlers on my ship, not even feathered ones.’

Penhaligon hauls himself up the companionway to the spar deck where the wind slams his face and inflates his lungs like a pair of new bellows. Wetz has the wheel whilst lecturing a wobbly cluster of midshipmen on recalcitrant tillers in labouring seas. They salute the Captain, who shouts into the wind, ‘What think you of the weather ahead, Mr Wetz?’

‘Good news is, sir, the clouds’re scattering to the west; bad news is, the wind’s swung a point northerly and blows a couple of knots harder. Regarding the pump, sir, Mr O’Loughlan’s fashioning a new chain, but he thinks there’s a new leak – rats chewed the devil aft of the powder magazine.’

When not eating our victuals, thinks Penhaligon, they eat my ship.

‘Tell the boatswain to hold a miller-hunt. Ten tails buys an extra quart.’

Wetz’s sneeze sprays a downwind midshipman. ‘The men’ll enjoy the sport.’

Penhaligon crosses the rolling quarterdeck. It is in a slutty state: Snitker doubts the Japanese lookouts could distinguish an unkempt Yankee trader from a Royal Navy frigate with gun-ports blackened, but the Captain is taking nothing for granted. Lieutenant Hovell stands at the taffrail, next to the deposed former Chief of Dejima. Hovell senses the Captain’s approach, turns and salutes.

Snitker turns and nods, like an equal. He gestures towards the rocky islet, passing at a fair clip and a safe four or five hundred yards. ‘Torinoshima.’

‘Torinoshima, Captain’, thinks Penhaligon, but inspects the islet. Torinoshima is more a large rock than a little Gibraltar, plastered in guano and raucous with seabirds. It is cliff-bound on all sides, except for a stony scree-fall to leeward where a brave boat might attempt an anchorage. Penhaligon tells Hovell, ‘Ask our guest if he ever heard of a landing.’

Snitker’s answer takes up two or three sentences.

What a gagged, mud-slurping thing, thinks Penhaligon, is the Dutch tongue.

‘He thinks not, sir: he never heard of any attempted landing.’

‘His reply was more involved than that.’

‘ “None but a bloody-minded simpleton would chance his longboat”, sir.’

‘My sensibilities are not so easily wounded, Mr Hovell. In future, translate in full.’

The First Lieutenant looks awkward. ‘My apologies, Captain.’

‘Ask him if Holland or any nation lays claim to Torinoshima.’

Snitker’s response to the question contains a sneer and the word ‘Shogun’.

‘Our guest suggests,’ explains Hovell, ‘that we consult with the Shogun before planting our Union Jack up in all that bird-shit.’ More follows, with Hovell paying close attention and verifying a detail or two. ‘Mr Snitker adds that Torinoshima is referred to as the “signpost to Japan”, and if this wind keeps up, tomorrow we’ll catch sight of the “garden wall”, the Goto Islands, subject to the Lord of Hizen, in whose dominion Nagasaki is located.’

‘Ask him if the Dutch Company ever landed on the Goto Islands.’

This question earns a longer answer.

‘He says, sir, that the Company’s captains never provoked…’

The three men grip the taffrail as the Phoebus plunges and bucks.

‘… never provoked the authorities so blatantly, sir, because Hidden -’

A cascade of spray falls over the bow; a drenched sailor swears in Welsh.

‘- Hidden Christians still live there, so all comings and goings…’

One of the midshipmen tumbles down the companionway with a yell.

‘… are watched by government spies, but no bumboats shall approach us lest the crew be executed as smugglers, along with their families.’

Rise by plunge, Torinoshima diminishes in stature off the starboard stern. The Captain, Lieutenant and traitor sink into their own thoughts. Shearwaters and terns hover, roll and plunge. The fourth bell of the first dog watch is struck, bringing out the men of the larboard watch without lagging: word has spread that the Captain is abroad. The off-duty men go below-decks for two hours of make-and-mend.

A narrow amber eye of sky opens on the southern horizon.

‘There, sir!’ says Hovell, childlike for a moment. ‘Two dolphins!’

Penhaligon sees nothing but heaving, slate-blue waves. ‘Where?’

‘A third! A beauty!’ Hovell points, aborts another syllable, and says, ‘Gone.’

‘Until dinnertime, then,’ says Penhaligon to Hovell, moving away.

‘Ah, dinnertime,’ repeats Snitker in English, and mimes drinking.

Grant me patience, Penhaligon musters a thin smile, and coffee.

The purser leaves the cabin, having worked through the day’s subtractions to the Pay Book. His buzzing voice and charnel-house breath have left Penhaligon with a headache to match the pain in his foot. ‘The one thing worse than dealing with pursers,’ his patron Captain Golding advised him many years ago, ‘is being one. Every company needs a figure-head of hatred: better it be him than you.’

Penhaligon drains the silty dregs. Coffee sharpens my mind, he thinks, but burns my guts and strengthens my old enemy. Since leaving Prince of Wales Island, an unwelcome truth has become irrefutable: his gout is launching a second attack. The first occurred in Bengal last summer: the heat was monstrous, and the pain was monstrous. For a fortnight he could not endure even the light touch of a cotton sheet against his foot. A first attack of the ailment can be laughed away as a rite of passage, but after the second, a man risks being dubbed ‘a gouty captain’ and his prospects with the Admiralty can be poleaxed. Hovell may harbour his suspicions, thinks Penhaligon, but daren’t air them: the ward rooms of the Service are cluttered with first lieutenants, orphaned by the premature loss of their patrons. Worse yet, Hovell may be tempted by a nimbler patron and jump ship, depriving Penhaligon of his finest officer and a future captain’s indebtedness. His second lieutenant, Abel Wren, well connected via his marriage to Commodore Joy’s ruthless daughter, will smack his lips at the thought of these unexpected vacancies. I am, then, Penhaligon concludes, engaged in a foot race against my gout. If I seize this year’s Dutch copper and, please, God, prise open the treasure box of Nagasaki before gout lays me low, my financial and political futures are assured. Otherwise, Hovell or Wren shall take the credit for bagging the copper and the trading post – or else the mission fails altogether and John Penhaligon retires to West Country obscurity and a pension of, at best, two hundred pounds a year, paid late and begrudgingly. In my darker hours, I declare, it appears that Lady Luck won me my captaincy eight years ago just for the private pleasure of squatting over me and voiding her bowels. First, Charlie mortgages the remains of the family estate, takes out debts in his younger brother’s name and disappears; second, his prize-agent and banker absconds to Virginia; third, Meredith, his dear Meredith, dies of typhus; and fourth, there is Tristram, vigorous, strident, respected, handsome Tristram, killed at Cape St Vincent, leaving his father nothing but grief and the crucifix salvaged by the ship’s surgeon. And now comes the gout, he thinks, threatening even to wreck my career…